Spot Runner Acquires Weblistic, Seeks Synergies Between TV and Online Advertisements

Spot Runner, an online service that helps local businesses develop and run professional-looking advertisements for TV and radio, has acquired Weblistic, a company that helps these same businesses run online advertising campaigns.

The all-stock deal intends to produce profitable synergies between traditional and new media. As part of the announcement, Spot Runner is citing a Jupiter Research study claiming that TV advertising is the “number one impetus for people to search for a particular company or product online.” So the idea is that the acquisition of Weblistic will allow Spot Runner to set up more complete advertising campaigns for local businesses, ones that don’t overlook the Jupiter findings but rather ensure that TV and radio advertisement audiences find the follow-up information they seek online.

The team behind Weblistic has been working in the local online advertising space since the late 1990s and was actually responsible for YellowPages.com. Spot Runner co-founder David Waxman is confident that the company’s acquisition of Weblistic will give it a unique opportunity to serve local businesses. As he puts it:

We are going to be the first one to be able to offer an integrated marketing campaign to these local guys. When you marry television with online, television can substantially increase lift online.

Given Google’s predominance in the online advertising space, and its interest in television advertising, this acquisition should make Spot Runner an even more attractive acquisition target for them.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 8:58 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.